- Recorded with FCEU
- Uses death as shortcut
- Luck manipulation
- Fastest time to reach the ending
About a week later, here comes another run, with an even bigger improvement!
Here's what changed:
- Picked "!" as a name instead of nothing
- Got to Level 8 instead of 7
- Beat one more Goldman
- Bought 5 keys instead of 3, got the Wings at Rimuldar
- Bought 2 herbs at Garinham (but didn't get the chest in the dungeon)
That added about 1 minute, but allowed to do this:
- Got to the Dragonlord's castle with 6 herbs (max), more HP and MP
- Beat the Dragonlord's human form in 8 hits instead of 12
- Beat the dragon form with mostly Hurt, saving a lot of time and making the fight much less boring and repetitive
- Used the wings to return to the castle instantly
So it ended up 4:32 shorter.
The character's stats aren't random, but determined only by the name. Using "!" gave me the best overall stats (mostly higher strength and agility), saving a few turns in some fights ... having a short name to scroll through only took away a small fraction of that saved time.
Using Hurt against the Dragonlord only has a 1/16 chance to work, 1/8 chance to do max damage (12), and all monsters have a 1/3 chance to wake up (which must be avoided). That made the odds quite low and resulted in some 3 second waits and non constant damage (10-12), but that was the best I could get. I actually went as far as figuring out the game's randomization and how it determined things so that I could make a program that simulates it and shows the results for each frame, allowing me to plan the whole fight in advance and saving a lot of re-records and trouble.